The city already had a religion. We stopped competing with it.

Every May, Indianapolis stops being a normal American city. The month belongs to the Indianapolis 500 — the largest single-day spectator sporting event in the world, in a town of under a million people.

If you run another sports property here, that's usually treated as a problem. You're competing for attention, media, discretionary spend and calendar space against something you cannot possibly outweigh.

We stopped treating it as competition.

The overlap nobody was serving

Our fan base was already made up of people who love motor racing. That's not a coincidence — it's what living here means. Nobody had to be persuaded to care about the 500.

There was also a second audience arriving: hundreds of thousands of visitors coming into the city for race weekend, with a Saturday night to fill before Sunday's race.

Those two facts pointed at the same answer. Rather than schedule quietly around the 500, we built a match that was explicitly part of the weekend — Racing Indy Night, in partnership with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Making it real rather than themed

The difference between a theme night and a genuine crossover is whether the other side actually shows up.

IMS did. The launch featured IndyCar driver Jack Harvey alongside Indy Eleven's Cam Lindley. Match-day posters and a full merchandise collection were built for it. On the morning of the Indy 500, Chuck Lofton of WTHR was on air from the Speedway wearing the Racing Indy gear — which is not a placement you can buy on Race Day in Indianapolis.

PR followed across all major local networks, because the story was legitimate rather than promotional.

What it produced

The merchandise became the largest revenue-generating item the club had ever created — and it has continued to be. The collaboration is still running years after I left.

Net-new fans to gameday and the club database grew by over 20%.

And a behaviour emerged we hadn't fully predicted: supporters started arriving early specifically to get the limited items, so they could wear them at the track the following day. The jersey stopped being a souvenir of our match and became part of their race-weekend outfit. Our brand travelled to the 500 on the backs of our own fans.

The strongest partnership isn't the one with the biggest logo. It's the one your fans were going to act out anyway.

Why it kept working

What transfers

• Find the thing you can't outcompete — and join it. Fighting a cultural institution for attention is expensive. Attaching to one is nearly free.
• Design for the wearer's next day, not just the event. Merchandise that has a second occasion outsells merchandise that only commemorates a first.
• Check whether the partner participates. A driver, a broadcaster on race morning, a co-built collection — those turn a theme into a genuine collaboration.
• Build things that outlive you. The clearest evidence a programme was right is that it's still running after you've gone.